Thirty years ago, the school district tried and failed to bring black and white students together. Will its latest effort undermine one of the city's most successful schools?

Manassas High School students peruse books during a Reading is Fundamental rally. (AP Photo/Jim Weber)

Samantha Crawford, an 18-year-old high-school senior, doesn't
like to use the word "ghetto" to describe her neighborhood in the center of
Memphis, Tennessee, but she can't think of a better one. In Binghampton, people
drink and hang out. They are transient, moving from apartment to apartment and
job to job. Many don't work at all. Samantha speculates that few have finished
college, or even high school.

In the past two years, though, Samantha has begun to look at her
neighborhood as an inspiration. "It's not about where I stay, or
wherever I come from, but what I'm going to make of it," she says.

Samantha once earned only Bs and Cs. Now, she makes straight
As. She had dreamed of college, but wasn't sure how she'd get there. Now, she's
feeling overwhelmed by the choices available to her. In the past few months,
she received five college acceptance letters, along with a scholarship to a
local community college.

She attributes her success to her family, by which she means
her mom, but also her teachers and principal at Manassas High School, located
across town in North Memphis. "If you fail at Manassas..." she says, before
stopping herself. "I don't see how that's possible."

The reforms that drove her school's success are now up in
the air, however. A contentious merger plan with the suburban school district
surrounding Memphis has roiled the city, jeopardizing an effort to overhaul the struggling district and setting up a
potential clash between the two leading approaches to school reform.

Manassas, an all-black, nearly all-poor school, has a lot going
for it: a new building, a new set of intensely dedicated teachers who willingly
work on Saturdays, and the attention -- and money -- of national foundations and advocacy
groups, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The principal, James
Griffin, is a soft-spoken former football player who wears rectangular glasses
and immaculate suits and spends his days in classrooms, monitoring and
helping teachers. He makes personal calls to students who fall behind.

The school could be a poster child for the "no-excuses"
education reform movement, which argues that schools and teachers should be
able to help all students succeed, regardless of the challenges they face
outside of school -- including broken families, violence and poverty. Last year,
111 of 131 seniors who applied to college were accepted. (The graduating class
was 150.) The previous year, only 25 graduating seniors had been accepted.

Manassas is among a handful of schools in Memphis that have
successfully piloted reforms based on the no-excuses ideas that have also driven
the charter-school movement. Administrators expect the success to spread this
year, following a full slate of changes, including a new intensive teacher-evaluation
system with multiple classroom observations per year that was rolled out
in the fall. Indispensable to the project has been a $90
million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, supplemented by
funding from local donors. The money has paid for consultants who helped hire new mission-driven
principals and teachers like Griffin, and new technology, including video
cameras to record teachers in the classroom. It will eventually fund bonus pay
for teachers who raise student achievement.

But last winter, the Memphis school board essentially gave
up, endangering the reform work when they voted to dissolve the school district
into the whiter, wealthier suburban district that rings the city. The merger
means the city school board will have to disband and be replaced by a joint
city-suburban board. The administrators who initiated the reform effort may be
removed.

City voters upheld the move, which was partly about money.
The suburban county that encompasses Memphis has always helped fund education
within the city. Although the suburbs run their own schools, they are not completely
autonomous. A state law passed in 1982 banned them from breaking away into an
independent school district -- something many suburban areas were interested in
doing in the aftermath of school desegregation, when white families fleeing
from cities and towns filled up suburban neighborhoods.

Until now, this meant that Memphis could benefit from
suburban funding while maintaining its own board and making its own decisions
about how the money would be spent. But when Republicans took over the state
assembly in 2010, it seemed likely they would repeal the 1982 law, making it
possible for the suburbs to finally create their own district and withdraw
their fiscal support. The Memphis school board acted before they had a chance
to do so: By choosing to dissolve into the wealthier surrounding district, the
board essentially decided to give up the school district's autonomy in order to
keep the funds rolling in.

Memphis school board members and administrators cite another
reason for the merger, however. For the district to close the achievement gap
between rich and poor students, school officials say they need to share not
just funding with middle-class schools, but also, if possible, students, teachers,
and the involved parents who help drive suburban success. "We know that if
there's diversity, and it's socioeconomic diversity, those students tend to
perform better. It's less homogenous," says Tomeka Hart, a school board member
and president of the Memphis Urban League.

Consolidating with the county schools is not just about
protecting funding. It's a last-ditch effort to revive the goals of the school
desegregation movement from a half-century ago. For two decades after the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, the Memphis schools
remained starkly segregated. In 1973, a federal court ordered Memphis to
integrate its schools using busing, but the program met with massive resistance
from whites. Many fled for the suburbs or private schools. "Clearly people feel
like this is a continuation of something," says Daniel Kiel, a law professor at
the University of Memphis who has studied school desegregation in Memphis. "In
many ways it is, from an ideas standpoint."

Now, the two reform movements -- one that argues schools should
be able to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and improve on their own, and
another that argues schools are constrained by conditions beyond their control
like poverty and segregation -- are on a collision course in Memphis. The merger,
which will be completed by next year, has led some to worry that Gates could
pull its funds and the reforms could come to a halt, while suburban residents
have protested against joining their school district with the high-minority,
high-poverty Memphis schools. Although Memphis leaders have said a revival of
busing for either white or black students is highly unlikely, fears among
parents persist. Some towns in the suburbs are now talking of setting up their
own separate districts. Both opponents and advocates have warned that many
white families could move out of the county altogether.

Despite the obstacles, school leaders are hoping the merger
could present a third way to the warring sides in the larger debate about how
to reform education. The Memphis school superintendent, Kriner Cash, who has
led the teacher-focused reform effort, is excited about the city-county
merger -- even though it could mean he loses his job.

"This is controversial," he says, acknowledging that his
views on the merger may clash with the no-excuses doctrine that has defined his
tenure in the district. "The gap closes when folks go to school together, when
they play together, when they're in afterschool programs together, and when
they live in the same communities together," he says. "It's a both-and. It's
not an either-or. That is the vision of this new district for me."

* * *

Memphis
is a place of contrasts. It's the poorest large metropolitan area in America, according
to the latest census data. Inside the city limits, rundown houses and
liquor stores barricaded behind iron bars make the poverty palpable. The city
spans a lot of land, and in many places it is sparsely populated, with empty
lots stretching across multiple acres.

Education
researchers have long known that poverty is linked to low student achievement,
and Memphis hasn't been an exception. The city schools are the worst
in Tennessee, which in turn ranks near the bottom on national achievement
tests.

Beyond
the city limits, however, new suburban malls bustle with activity. Housing
along the inner ring is showing its age, but large houses with sweeping lawns
have gone up on the outskirts. Shelby County encompasses the city, but has its
own semi-independent school district covering the suburban areas. (Some tax
funding is shared, but the school districts are run separately.) It is one of
the wealthiest districts in the state. The percentage of students who pass
state exams in the suburbs is more than double the percentage in the city.

The
city's deep divides are partly a function of a previous
effort to unite it 40 years ago. In 1968, the city's schools were
two-thirds white and a third black. Just five years later, once the busing
initiative began, the ratio flipped: Two-thirds of students were black, and a
third were white.

In the first year of busing, the old Manassas High School
was refitted with air conditioning and enrolled some white students, but
integration didn't last long. When Samantha Crawford's mother, Quintonia, attended Manassas
in the mid-1980s, only two white students were enrolled, and both lived in the
neighborhood. It was a good school then -- discipline was strict, she says -- but
it's even better now.

"When Mr. Griffin got there, he promoted college a lot more
than it had been promoted," says Crawford, who didn't go to college herself and
who now works as a hotel banquet server. "And they have some great teachers."

The
school, now in a brand-new building paid for in part by suburban tax dollars, stands
on a desolate stretch of road in northern Memphis. Nearby, an abandoned chimney
reaching out of an empty field is all that remains of an old Firestone factory.
The only other signs of life are a Baptist church and a liquor store. The 550
students at Manassas don't fill the cavernous space, which has room for twice
as many. Even during class changes, the school has a hushed, empty feel to it.

Manassas was built on what used to be housing projects, meaning
a major source of students no longer exists. But the small size allows for Griffin,
the principal, to pay close attention to the remaining students. After calling
a child who has fallen behind, Griffin often brings in the family to see him in
person. He once traveled to the workplace of a mother who couldn't make it to
the school.

Griffin -- trained by one of the private groups that have
flocked to the city in the last three years to help improve its struggling
schools -- has been on the job a year and a half. Many of the teachers are also
new after Griffin replaced nearly half the staff. Classes of 15 students spread
out in classrooms big enough for 40, with banks of computers lining the walls. Empty
rooms have been converted into a student "dorm room," where seniors research
colleges, a "data lounge," for the teachers to study student progress on weekly
tests, and a museum to commemorate Manassas High's century-long legacy as an
all-black school. "Find a way, or make a way" is Griffin's slogan.

Griffin's belief that teachers alone can raise the
achievement and aspirations of children who live in poverty is based on
experience. He
was born when his mother was in eighth grade and lived with his grandparents
after they kicked his mother out of the house. They were solidly working-class;
his grandmother was a school custodian and his grandfather a factory worker.
They spoiled him, but weekends at the house often got out of hand. He remembers
his grandmother playing dice with the neighbors, and lots of alcohol. On one
occasion, his mother stopped by to see him and found him drunk. He was four.

After a court battle, his mother gained custody and took him
in, but she also struggled to provide a good home. She already had another
baby, and soon had three more. She was illiterate, so Griffin read the mail out
loud to her every afternoon. The family lived on $260 a month, and often slept
on relatives' couches. They also spent time in a homeless shelter. On at least
one night, they slept on the street. By the time he reached 12th
grade, Griffin had attended 11 different schools. He was often in trouble, and
barely passing his classes.

In his last year, one of his teachers pushed him to try for
college. He did extra-credit assignments to bring up his grades, and took the
ACT six times before he scored high enough to be eligible for admission. The
University of Tennessee-Martin accepted him on a football scholarship. From
there, he eventually earned his master's degree and became a teacher. He's now
working on a doctorate.

Griffin says his childhood mirrors that of many of his students
at Manassas, where 95 percent of students are poor and 99 percent are
minorities. In Memphis as a whole, 87 percent of
students are poor enough to qualify for federally subsidized school meals.
Two-thirds come from single-parent families. Nearly a
third of students change schools each year. Griffin often uses his life
story to remind his teachers and students that people who believe poverty is an
excuse for failure are wrong.

"They say you've got to have a middle-class parent to make
sure a child is successful, but what about me? Was I an anomaly?" he says. "I
had teachers that kept me in the game and got me to stay in school, and that's
what it takes."

Quincy Hassell lives in a working-class black neighborhood
in East Memphis and moved around to various schools within Memphis before
ending up at Manassas this year. Already he has internalized Griffin's message.
Quincy went from a 1.8 grade-point average last year to a 3.5 this year. He's
aiming for a 3.8, and out of the 10 colleges he applied to, five have already
accepted him. "At this school,
they woke me up," Quincy says. "Do you want to be on the corner begging for
money, or do you want to do something with yourself?"

Griffin's conviction that all children can succeed with
enough teacher attention and skill is also grounded in necessity. After busing
failed in Memphis -- and many cities like it -- teachers and principals in urban
schools were left to make the best of very difficult student populations.
Although research has
shown that the more concentrated the poverty in a school, the worse children
perform, the latest generation of education reformers has seized on evidence
that teachers are the single greatest factor affecting a child's learning in school.

Memphis appears to be further proof that segregated urban
schools can improve despite the odds. In 2011, the school district posted the
biggest test-score gains in the state.

Josh Edelman, a senior program officer at the Gates
Foundation, said the progress on adopting reforms in Memphis is "exciting."
Although the merger vote prompted some
Memphis leaders to worry that Gates would pull its funds, the foundation
has said it will stay committed to the city, "as long as effective teaching and
improved outcomes for all students remains a top priority." Edelman says he's
hoping the merger of the two districts will allow the teacher-focused work to
expand to a larger number of students.

The
suburban district is pursuing its own programs to improve teaching. The merger
has pitted the two bureaucracies against each other, however, and
administrators in both systems have become defensive about their reform strategies,
and dismissive of the other side's efforts.

"I think the achievement gap takes a lot of different
approaches to close. It starts with great teachers and great leadership,"
Edelman says. "And I
do think kids learn a lot from each other."

Griffin and his supervisors in the Memphis district offices
argue that this mixing of students is what is missing in their efforts. What if
the barriers between inner-city and suburban schools were broken down, so
students could learn from one other? And what if then, Manassas could combine
its intensive academics with another sort of education, in which students pick
up the social and cultural tools they will need to negotiate the outside world
they'll someday encounter? What if the struggling schools in Memphis didn't have
to turn themselves around alone?

"It's not that children are smarter" in the suburbs, says
Cash, who studied integration as a master's student at Stanford University and
led the schools in Martha's Vineyard, Mass., for nine years. "They've had more
exposure to the things that equate to school-smart ... concepts, words and
experiences that equate to book-knowledge, and to test-knowledge."

Integrating schools isn't enough to completely close the
achievement gap, but research has also found that mixing students by race and
class can significantly improve
their outcomes. "We ought to have the best ingredients for our students,"
Griffin says. "That mixing would enhance their world."

After taking over at Manassas last year, Griffin tried to
add in that missing element to his school. Most of his students have never left
the city limits, and many have never left their immediate neighborhood, he
says. Few have had exposure to adults with white-collar jobs besides their
teachers. Even if his students do well in high school, it's unclear they'll
make it through college, where they will have to fend for themselves in a more
diverse environment. Nationally, only 40
percent of black college students graduate from college, compared to 60
percent of whites. Minority graduation rates are the worst at public
universities and community colleges -- the types of schools where most Manassas
students go.

Griffin talked to a private school in the suburbs about
creating an exchange, so the students could meet occasionally to talk about
where they were from and learn from one another. The planning was going well,
until, Griffin says, the private-school administrators realized his vision
included not just trips to the suburbs for his students, but trips to Manassas
for the white students. The private school backed out.

The
Memphis merger could present a new opportunity to continue the reforms
introduced by Cash, while also allowing city schools and their more affluent
neighbors to exchange resources, teachers and perhaps, someday, students.
Irving Hamer, a deputy superintendent in Memphis, says that the "unspoken
intent" is to "attempt to do some reconciliation between race and class
here."

When the district expands to encompass the entire county,
students both inside the city limits and out in the suburbs will ostensibly
have wider choices about where to go to school, which could provide
opportunities for voluntary student mixing. For years, the city has been able
to retain its small proportion of white students largely through a set of
selective magnet schools that are attractive to middle-class families. In a
joint suburban-city district, poor students from the inner city might also have
the option of choosing a suburban school instead of the one in their
neighborhood. (Manassas, for example, has attracted students from all over the
city district because of its improving reputation.)

But
Hamer says a new round of busing is a very unlikely outcome of the merger. "We've
had our busing episodes, and we're not reinventing those," he says. "It's not
coming back." Instead,
he predicts the merger could lead suburban areas to separate from the
consolidated district and white families to move away.

Last
November, more than 100 residents of Bartlett, a small city situated just over
the county line from Memphis, gathered for a town meeting in a converted
church. Nearly all were white, although the number of black residents in
Bartlett has increased to 16 percent in recent years. (The racial make-up of
the suburbs has changed significantly in the past decade as many black
middle-class residents of Memphis have moved in, often in search of better
schools.) After a long prayer by a local pastor, the mayor, Keith McDonald,
told the crowd that more than 1,000 students had left the local schools since
the Memphis school board voted to dissolve itself the previous year.

"The
people in Memphis don't get it," he said. "If these people leave, the burden
goes up on all of us."

Bartlett,
along with two other towns in Shelby County, is now considering whether to
create a separate school district -- under the same state law that prompted the
merger -- before the two districts join next year. A consultant released a
report this January suggesting a new district wouldn't put too great a
burden on the towns' taxpayers. It is unclear if they will have to buy the
school buildings from the county, however, which could be costly. And the state
law is likely to face challenges in court by advocates of the consolidation.

Many
residents believe the cost will be worth it. "I would rather the
decisions about our schools be made by my neighbors, rather than an entire
metro area that maybe doesn't have the best interest of my kids at heart," said
Chris Huffstetler, 43, a 14-year Bartlett resident and father of three, at the
town meeting. "I trust you guys. I trust my neighbors." The audience broke into
applause.

Later, his wife, Lisa Huffstetler, 46, explained that while
she understood that difficult home lives of students are a challenge for
Memphis, the district has a history of corruption and misspending money. "We've
watched them make ridiculous decisions, one after the other," she says. "We're
terrified for the education of our kids."

Samantha
Crawford, who wants to be a criminal profiler, a career she learned about on TV,
hopes the suburban towns won't secede. She has studied the merger, and thinks
it could lift Memphis schools to new heights. "Some people don't know
this, but schools in Cordova and Germantown, they challenge them harder than
they challenge us," she says, referring to the suburbs. "If we all get together
and become as one, we'll get a better education."

The merger seems to
have inspired school reformers in Memphis to broaden their hopes about what's
possible in school reform, but Manassas's gleaming but half-empty halls may never
be filled with a blend of middle-class and lower-income students. "If we're going to get the kind of pop where the Memphis
city schools aren't the bottom percent of schools in the state, which ... they
will always be because of the poverty," says Cash, "then what you have to do is
you have to get kids into the same classes." Without
that mix, some now say, the achievement gap may shrink, but it won't close
completely.

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